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The Great War: From Spectator 

to Participant 



By PROFESSOR ANDREW C. McLAUGHLIN 
Of the University of Chicago 



Reprinted for 

THE NATIONAL BOARD FOR HISTORICAL SERVICE 

FROM THE HISTORY TEACHERS MAGAZINE 

Volume VIU, Page 183 lo 187 



OCT 18 1921 



Tib© &@nft Wm?°a FiroiM Sp@©(tsi(l@ir d® Fgur&npsiiBift 



When the war broke out in 191-1 everyone in 
America was astonished, and almost everyone was 
quite unable to understand the fundamental causes 
of it. Many of us were more than astonished ; we 
were thoroughly out of patience and without imme- 
diate and deep sympathies for cither side in the 
struggle. America had lived in isolation. Though 
our government had been to some extent drawn into 
the swirl of world politics, we had no deep laid 
scheme for exploitation of inferior races, no colonial 
ambitions, no determination to force our products 
on other nations, and no fear of neighboring govern- 
ments. We did not know that we were being jeal- 
ously watched and that spies recorded our temper and 
our frailties. We did not see that we had anything 
to do with a European war. Of the ever vexed 
Balkans we knew little or nothing, though we had 
heard of the " sick man of Europe," who seemed to 
be an unconscionable time in shuffling off this mortal 
coil. We had read of Hague conferences and peace 
societies and peace palaces, and believed that war 
was too absurd to be really possible between the 
nations of Western Europe. 

With the invasion of Belgium we began to rub our 
eyes. We found that a region which had been known 
as the " cockpit " of Europe was once more to be 
beaten down by the tramp of alien armies. And then 
came the stories of atrocities in Belgium. At first we 
read with doubt, and only after the publication of the 
" Bryce Report" with the supporting documents did 
we see the realities and believe the unbelievable. 
We discovered what militarism meant in its final 
qualities, militarism which included devastation and 
horrors as portions of military policy. Belgium set- 
Lled our sympathies, for, we saw that the whole thing 
was premeditated; we realized that methods of 
mobilization, not to speak of strategic railroads, are 
not mapped out in a moment. Machtpolitik was shat- 
tered when it shocked the conscience of the world. 
John Bright, I believe it was, said that the only value 
of war is to teach geography; but this war has taught 
language; everybody knows what Schrecklichkeit 
means, and everybody knows too that it is involved 
in the philosophy of war when it is carried out with 
relentless thoroughness and with absolute disregard 
of the ordinary promptings of humanity. 

The attempts of German propagandists, to justify 
the invasion, showed an astonishing inability or un- 
willingness to make frank use of public documentary 
material. Documents found in the Belgium archives 
showed that some years ago an English military 
officer and a Belgium official had consulted together 
as to what steps England should take in ease Ger- 
many invaded Belgium. After Germany had done 
the very thing which England and Belgium had 
feared, German propagandists tried to justify her by 
declaring that Belgium was considering means of pre- 
venting it. The use made of the documents actually 
affronted our intelligence and added to our distrust. 

At that time we began to study deliberately the 



problem as to which nation was responsible for the 
war. It is now unnecessary to enter into the details 
of this question. None of the nations of Europe had 
been free, the world had not been free, from a species 
of intrusive, aggressive nationalism and from jealous 
rivalry in trade which made the maintenance of 
peace exceedingly difficult; colonial ambitions and 
dollar diplomacy had long daily threatened the peace 
of the world. This we knew ; but even if no one 
nation was solely responsible for a condition which 
made the maintenance of peace difficult, we were com- 
pelled to conclude that the outbreak of hostilities was 
primarily chargeable to Germany; and, as we realized 
this, we became certain that America would hope for 
the defeat of the German armies. As we studied the 
situation it became plain that war was due either to 
a psychological explosion or to premeditated deter- 
mination to gain territory and power by immediate 
action. The whole psychological condition of Ger- 
many was prepared for it; war and armies, engines 
of destruction, the jealous enmity ascribed to foreign 
nations, the loudly proclaimed perils of the Father- 
land — those things kept constantly in men's minds 
for years — laid the train for the conflagration. That 
the Teutonic powers deliberately planned a war in 
1914 is indicated by considerable evidence. Though 
to-day we may think this evidence not entirely final 
and conclusive, it doubtless had its effect on every- 
body acquainted with the history of the last decade. 
This at least appeared certain: the military author- 
ities in Germany, directly and with amazing fore- 
thought, planned for a war which must come soon, 
and they were determined to win for the country a 
"place in the sun" and establish its power. If 
authorities are convinced that a war is inevitable and 
approve what they confidently believe will be its out- 
come, are they not likely to grasp the favorable 
moment for beginning hostilities? 

It is sometimes said that Germany intended to 
dominate the world. We had great difficulty in be- 
lieving in the existence of such fantastic ambitions, 
but we came slowly to see (1) that Germany believed 
in the superiority of German efficiency and of Ger- 
man culture, and thought they must be made triumph- 
ant; (2) that at least the ruling classes had a curious 
incapacity to understand that political control was 
not necessary to the extension of influence, to per- 
meation of thought, and even to the development of 
trade; (3) that these persons were determined that 
the world should live in awe of Germany, and if 
rivals threatened to prosper they must be beaten into 
becoming humility. 1 Although all this is probably be- 
low the truth it is so preposterous that we still have 
moments of doubt; and yet a person who has had 
unusual opportunities for knowing the situation, and 
has but recentlj returned, after some years of resi- 

i If any one disbelieves the understatement above, he 
ought to read " Hurrah and Hallelujah," a book largely 
made up of documents collected by a Dane, Professor J. P. 
Bang, of Copenhagen. 



dence in Germany, tells us, " The Battle of the Marne 
not only saved the Allies — it saved Germany." That 
is the opinion even of a large part of the people of 
Germany. In the defeat at the Marne the hope of 
a world dominion was shattered. The lunacy of the 
war lords then in control was changed. 

Still, as we began to realize all these things, we 
did not yet feel that it was our business to enter the 
conflict, not even when we came to see that America 
herself was in actual danger, certainly in actual and 
immediate danger if Germany was not defeated by 
the Allies. We were loath to credit what appears to 
be the truth, that, to attribute to the Kaiser the offen- 
sive words of Napoleon — America was within the 
scope of his policy. Possibly it was shameful in us 
to wait and to rely on the allied powers when we be- 
gan to feel that this defeat imperiled our own safety. 
But something more than fear was needed to force 
us into the fight; not until the issues were clear to 
the nations of the world, not until there was hope 
for a constructive peace, not till we heard the call 
oi humanity, were we prepared to fling in our power 
and resources. 

Doubtless our final entrance into the conflict was 
brought about by cumulative irritation at German 
methods and policies. Our conviction of their un- 
worthiness grew gradually day by day. This con- 
viction was the result of experience of having act- 
ually lived through a great crisis. Among these irri- 
tations, which opened our eyes and hardened our 
hearts, none was more powerful than the machina- 
tions of the German spies. We were more than irri- 
tated, we were enlightened; we discovered what 
Weltpolitik and Realpolitik really were; German 
espionage in this country helped us to grasp the na- 
ture of a principle which is essentially criminal and 
which, if it continues, must make decent international 
relationships quite impossible. And so this fact began 
to stand out strongly: democracy cannot survive in 
an atmosphere of indecent intrigue; the government 
at Washington was forced to conclude that we cannot 
act in friendliness or co-operate with a government 
whose ways are devious, ungenerous, purely selfish 
and unreliable. 

It is perhaps unnecessary to speak of Zeppelin 
raids, poisonous gases, and deportation of men and 
women from the occupied portions of France and Bel- 
gium, although we have no right to forget these facts ; 
they are natural products, once more, of militaristic 
doctrine. We must remember that, if war means 
these horrors, all our efforts may well be directed 
against the prolongation of war and the success of 
militarism. Civilization is actually at stake unless 
something can be done to establish a decent work- 
ing order among the nations of the world. 2 

About the beginning of 1915 Admiral Tirpitz was 

2 Those that are still troubled about our entrance into 
the war should remember what was said by our commis- 
sioners who had been carrying on relief work in Belgium: 
" We wish to tell you," they said to President Wilson, 
" that there is no word in your historic statement that does 
not find a response in all our hearts. . . . Although we 
break with great regret our association with many (ierman 



reported to have made a statement about the use of 
submarines for destroying merchantmen, and about 
the beginning of February an effort was made to 
establish a war zone about the British Isles. Almost 
exactly the same time England put food for Germany 
on the contraband list, her technical excuse being that 
Germany had taken government charge of all food 
in the empire and thus could use all of her food as 
a basis of war. The diplomatic controversy that arose 
over the questions of contraband and blockade and 
war zones cannot be entered upon here in any detail. 
It is apparent to my mind that Germany cannot ex- 
cuse her attacks upon merchant vessels on the ground 
that she was merely retaliating against the British 
policy of starvation, though it is not unlikely that 
Britain would have attempted to use her fleet for that 
purpose even if Germany had not brought her sub- 
mersibles into play — just as Germany starved Paris 
in 1870. And especially is retaliation not tolerable 
when it is exercised without any reference to the 
rights and lives of neutrals. If Great Britain broke 
the rules of international law or violently extended 
them for her purposes, there is a very marked 
" difference between a prize court and a torpedo." 
Moreover, the British despatches to this government 
attempting to justify her procedure are certainly able 
and rest in no small degree on our own acts during 
the Civil War. 

Britain guarded and guided our trade even with 
neutral countries through which goods could be sent 
to Germany; but we could hardly be asked to do more 
than register complaint in the hope of reserving 
grounds for reparation or maintaining the technical 
rules of law. Did we have ground for claiming dam 
ages ? Perhaps ; but our trade prospered tremend- 
ously and increased greatly even with the neutral 
countries adjacent to Germany. 3 

With the sinking of the Lusitania, May, 1915, — a 
shameful and premeditated crime — President Wilson 
wrote sharply to the German government asserting 
that we should defend our rights upon the high seas. 
It seemed at that time our evident duly to maintain 
as much as possible of I lit- shattered fabric' of inter- 
national law. Although some persons thought we 
ought to enter the war at once, the President was not 
at that time prepared to advise such action. He still 
clung to the belief or the hope that, by reiterated 
declaration of the fundamental principles of justice 
and humanity, Germany might be brought to a reason- 
able course of conduct and that some of the prin- 
ciples wrought out by past centuries might be pre- 
served. What is the value of international law if it 
is to be cast to the winds when observance is incon- 



individuals, . . . there is no hope for democracy or liberal- 
ism unless the system which brought the world into this 
unfathomable misery can be stamped out once for all." 

sWliile, in my judgment, Britain in some respects broke 
away from the restraints of international law or unduly 
extended precedents that appeared to justify her, the ques- 
tion is by no means an easy one, and I have heard an able 
international lawyer say that, if the subject were sub- 
mitted to an impartial tribunal, he would be by no means 
certain of a decision in our behalf. 



venient? After the Sussex affair in the summer of 
1916 our relations with the German government were 
again greatly strained, but President Wilson suc- 
ceeded in getting a promise that merchantmen should 
not be sunk without warning and without saving lives 
unless the vessel should resist or attempt escape. 
This promise was coupled with a condition that we 
should coin pel Great Britain to surrender what Berlin 
asserted to be an illegal blockade. Remembering, 
possibly, the net into which Napoleon enticed James 
Madison about 107 years ago, our government did not 
accept the condition, but warned Germany that her 
obligations were " individual not joint, absolute and 
not relative." We rested easier; but we now realize 
th.it this willingness to forego the sinking of peaceful 
vessels and the taking of lives can be accounted for 
by the fact that the old U-boats were being destroyed 
and the Teutonic powers did not then have in read- 
iness the large and improved monsters of the deep 
witli which to carry on the work of destruction. This 
work broke out with some violence late in 1916, and, 
with the announcement that no warning would be 
given when ships were sunk within a war zone, cut- 
ting off nearly the whole coast of Western Europe, 
President Wilson sent the German ambassador home 
and war seemed inevitable. One of the astounding 
revelations of the political methods of the German 
foreign office was the announcement made by the 
Chancellor to the Reichstag and the German people, 
that President Wilson had broken off diplomatic rela- 
tions abruptly, although the step was taken eighteen 
months or more after the exchange of despatches on 
the Lusitania crime, and half a year after the ex- 
( liangc of notes about the Sussex. 

So far we have given only a meagre outline of the 
story and told it ineffectively, for not even in many 
words can one sketcli the growing uneasiness and dis- 
trust, the sense of despair, or the conflict between 
despair and hope. Was the world falling? Was 
civilization being wrecked in the whirlwind of bar- 
baric passion? Had Germany already destroyed 
civilization by bringing the world to see that there 
could be no faith between nations, and that at any 
juncture, on the spurious plea of necessity, frightful 
wrong could be committed? If this war ended in 
German victory, a victory won by years of devoted 
preparation, a victory won by submarines and Zeppe- 
lins and poisonous gases and deportation of men, 
women, and children to work in the fields and fac- 
tories of the conquering country, what was before the 
world? German victory appeared to mean the suc- 
< i ss of ruthlessness, of conquest by military prepara- 
tion ; it meant the enthronement of might; and it 
meant that we must henceforward live in a world of 
struggle — we and our children after us. 

Why did President Wilson, after long effort to 
maintain neutrality and even hasten the coming of 
peace, finally advocate war? Before attempting to an- 
swer this question, let us recall the President's efforts 
to tiring the conflicting nations to a statement of their 
terms, and to hold out to the world the conception 
ol I In' establishment of permanent peace. The Presi- 



dent's message on this subject came out almost simul- 
taneously with Germany's proposal in which she sug- 
gested peace on the basis of an assumed victory for 
her army. Such a peace the allied nations could not 
accept without accepting militarism, without losing 
the all important objects for which millions of men 
had already given their lives, and probably most of us 
here in America believe that such proposals were put 
forth chiefly to make the German people believe that 
the Allies were the aggressors and must bear the odium 
of further conflict. When the President called on the 
warring nations to state their terms of peace, possi- 
bly he still cherished the hope that, if terms were 
frankly stated, negotiations might actually be begun; 
almost certainly he desired sucli open statement as 
would show to the world at large the real essence of 
the conflict and also show that we were not ready to 
enter the struggle until we had made every possible 
effort to bring peace. The President's appeal pro- 
duced no very tangible results, although the Allied 
Powers stated their desires and purposes with con- 
siderable definiteness, and these terms did not on the 
whole appear to us unreasonable or unworthy. 

All through this time the President and all think- 
ing Americans were interested chiefly in the main- 
tenance of civilization, and they looked forward not 
merely to victory or to acquisition of territory by 
one or another nation, but to the foundation of a last- 
ing peace by the establishment of principles of justice 
and reason. We found that we could not paint in too 
dark colors the future of the world if we are all to 
remain under the ' pall of fear and suspicion and 
under the overwhelming burden of armament; and 
thus we came to see that without America's entrance 
into this war there was little hope for relief from the 
crushing weight of war and the almost equally bur- 
densome weight of ever-increasing armed preparation. 
Never, it appeared, in the long history of mankind, 
was there such a fearful alternative; never a louder 
eall for duty. America, without hope of profit, with 
no mean or subterranean purpose, must herself fight 
to maintain the principles of civilization and for the 
hope of lasting peace and propriety between nations. 
This growing belief that we must fight for peace, only 
gradually conquered most of us; for we had long be- 
lieved that American influence for peace was to come 
from remaining peaceful; and for this principle, we 
may still maintain, there is much to be said. The 
creative forces of the world, we may still remind our- 
selves, have sprung from character. America, by her 
successes in popular government, by a reasonable 
amount of respect for herself, lias helped to build up 
the democratic spirit and the democratic power from 
Peking to Petrograd and from London to Quebec and 
Melbourne. 

This, I say, we believe. But several tilings showed 
us that this just idealism is for the present imprac- 
ticable. (1) German philosophy scouts and flouts the 
notion that a state must not use its power to dasli 
down opposition. (2) German success would mean 
the victory of Machtpolitik -a victory for the very 
forces which pacific idealism decries. (3) If we ex- 



pected to bring into the world an appreciation of 
rights and duties, if we hoped for influence in the 
adjustment of world affairs, if we wished to see a 
world we could live in, it was necessary in time of 
trouble to do our part. The President had striven 
not only for our rights, but for the maintenance of 
law. Under much harsh criticism at home he went to 
the very limits of proposals; he offered his assistance; 
he announced that there was such a thing as being 
"too proud to fight;" he spoke of "peace without 
victory;" he hoped that the war could be settled in 
such a way that the nations after the war could live 
without hatred; he insisted that the world must be 
based on an organization, not for war, but for peace 
and good neighborhood. But strive or struggle as he 
might, it became daily more apparent that we should 
have little or nothing to say after the war, if we, un- 
willing to act now, called upon the nations to enter 
into a league of peace or summoned them to the estab- 
lishment of a new world order. If we held back, con- 
tenting ourselves with verbal threats and feline coax- 
ings, we should not have a single friend in the wide 
world unsuspicious of our motives. 

Thus far I have said little about t lie actual attacks 
on American rights and property. It is not necessary 
to say much, though they reached into the intolerable. 
Nor do I wish to dwell on affronts to American honor, 
for I do not highly value the code of the duelist. We 
can well remember, even in international affairs, that 
no one but one's self can stain one's honor, and that 
no nation can smirch another nation's spirit. We 
were, as I have said, confronted by a world situation 
in which we must play a strong, manly and honorable 
part. We despaired of a world in which millions of 
people could be thrown into war ; millions of young 
men could be buried in trenches on the battlefield or 
left to rot under the festering sun of France or 
Poland; millions of children could be beggared or 
stricken by disease, because an emperor and secret 
government had willed it so, or because nations could 
not learn the simple lessons of decent intercourse. 
What untold anguish might have been saved, had the 
impetuous, sword-proud William consented to dis- 
cussion as Britain pleadingly asked him to do during 
the last days of July, 1914! 

In his war message, April 2, President Wilson an- 
nounced that the American people felt no hostility to 
the German people, but that we could deal no longer 
with an ambitious, autocratic government which cast 
a nation into war with no apparent hesitation and 
without discussing their wishes. We are told, even in 
these days, that there is no distinction between the 
people and the government of Germany and that to 
assert such dualism is to disregard the most evident 
fact. Certainly the great masses of the people have 
sacrificed their lives for the Fatherland, and yet one 
of the most whimsical products of this war is that 
some men here in America should be asserting the 
unqualified serenity of the political atmosphere of 
Berlin just when William announced that this war 
had taught him the faithfulness and reliability of the 
common people and that political changes must come, 



and when Hollweg told the junkers that their day of 
domination is nearing its end. William has been 
taught something by the war ! Did he have to see a 
million Germans slaughtered, did he have to hear the 
cries of the widows and the fatherless, did he have to 
see blinded men learning their letters and crippled 
boys creeping along the streets of Berlin, before he 
could learn that the people could be trusted? Every 
incident in Germany in the last six weeks has demon- 
strated the weakness, not to say the criminality, of 
the imperial political regime. It now seems almost 
inevitable that if militarism is discredited by defeat, 
ministerial responsibility will be established in the 
empire, and William before long will be occupying 
that position of innocuous desuetude known as the 
kingship of a constitutional monarchy. 

" Still," some person will say, " Germany is not 
what Russia was. To class Russia with its cruel, 
cheap, mercenary bureaucracy and Germany to- 
gether as autocracies is to do violence to patent 
facts." I shall not seek to show how nearly the 
governmental system of the empire approaches in 
reality the autocratic type and how largely the re- 
sponsibility for all imperial acts rests in the hands 
of the Prussian king and a body of irreconcilable 
aristocrats. Of this much could be said, but we can 
omit all discussion of the quasi-representative insti- 
tutions of the empire. The trouble is deeper than 
mere forms of government; for the circle that shaped 
the policy of the state lived — this at least must be 
said — within a wall of psychological superiority and 
inculcated obedience as the great end of being. 
Every effort was made even to convince the German 
people of their exclusive and seclusive superiority, 
and William himself, a " king by the grace of God," 
was not able to see what a tragic, pathetic and humor- 
ous figure he made in the modern world of modern 
men. The whole psychological situation produced a 
dislocation of realities and a distortion of living 
truths. 

The present war throws us into actual, if not for- 
mal alliance with Great Britain and France. We 
have, I think, no real or fancied interest in mere 
territorial readjustment which would add to the power 
of either of these nations, but we are justified in 
having confidence in the democracy of France and 
the liberal forces of Great Britain. Our sympathy 
for France ought to teach us a great lesson. It shows 
us that republics are not ungrateful and that, after 
the lapse of one hundred and forty years, despite 
quarrels and disputes with the French government, 
we are still bound down by sentimental ties of grati- 
tude to France. We have come to see the undying 
strength of friendship between the masses of men and 
are given new hope that democracies, if they are will- 
ing to think, cannot make war upon one another im- 
petuously and in hatred. For England we still cher- 
ish, unfortunately, some of the old grievances that 
have been carried down, decade by decade, and taught 
through our school books to each succeeding genera- 
tion. We have not been properly taught to see that our 
own revolution was an English revolution, in which 



Englishmen of this side of tlir ocean were striving for 
the development and maintenance of liberty, and that 
that war, too, was a war against an arrogant leaden- 
headed aristocracy. Misunderstanding of Britain 
comes from the failure to appreciate the development 
of liberalism in her government, until she stands forth 
to-day as a great representative of democracy and of 
belief in the power and will of the common people. 

To lose sight of England's transformation, in which 
we have had a great part, is to lose sight of one of 
the most momentous developments of the last hundred 
years. Can we not forget crazy old George III and 
Lord North and the rest of his tribe, and remember 
the men of the middle century, the creators of modern 
British liberalism — Cobden, Bright and Gladstone, 
and a myriad of bold commoners — who battled suc- 
cessfully to destroy "the fortress of feudalism"? 
Can we not learn how deeply we are involved in the 
mighty structure of the British Empire as we find 
the lessons of our own Revolution and of our later 
history wrought into the policy of world-wide do- 
minion? Can we not see that the greatest empire of 
all history lias been built on the lessons of liberty 
which Britain learned from George Washington and 
Abraham Lincoln? Can we not see the tremendous 
force of democracy and individual liberty when we 
know that thousands upon thousands of colonials gave 
their lives ungrudgingly at Gallipoli and Yprcs? 
Surely we must come to see that a democracy like 
France or a democratic empire like Great Britain runs 
our own risks, faces our own dangers, is subject to 
the faults and blunders which we know so well, and 
that we arc not misled if the result of our efforts is 
to uphold a structure of imperial order based on the 
principles of justice, the strength of which has been 
to dramatically shown in the past three years. Some- 
times one is asked ironically when, forsooth, England 
became the friend of America. The answer can be 
quickly given, and given with absolute historical ac- 
curacy. It was when the British Parliament in 1867 
passed the second Reform Bill and England became a 
democracy — about two years and a half after the 
English aristocrats had fully seen their mistakes dur- 
ing our Civil War and had come to see that the great- 
est statesman the nineteenth century had as yet pro- 
duced was not born in a manor house on an English 
countryside, but in a log-cabin in Kentucky. Like- 
wise it can probably be safely said that France be- 
came our real friend, a nation with which we could 
work with open friendliness, when, with the down- 
fall of Napoleon III, the republican institutions of 
France were finally and firmly established. 



In the conduct of this war we must constantly re- 
member that we have had hopes of rendering the 
world safe for democracy. With all our frailties, 
which we must openly confess, with all our wasteful- 
ness and with all our follies, this war has taught us, 
as nothing else could, that there is nothing upon which 
we can more safely rely than the plain sense of the 
plain people. Perhaps nothing shows this more con-. 
clusively than our reluctance and distaste for military 
conquest and our hesitation in making up our minds 
to fight. We may continually remember the words of 
Lord John Russell — and no one better than he had 
reason to know the truth: "All experience of 
human nature teaches us the fact, that men who pos- 
sess a superiority, real or imaginary, over their 
fellow creatures, will abuse the advantages they en- 
joy." We must remember that we entered the war 
for peace, and we are offering a great sacrifice for a 
new world order. We believed that we could not get 
it by chiding Europe and refusing to do our part 
now, for Europe needed the assistance of an external 
power, disinterested and high-hearted. We may re- 
member that we have covered a continent almost as 
large as the whole of Europe with self-governing com- 
monwealths. We may remember the unselfish side of 
the Monroe Doctrine which we try to live up to as 
embodying a belief that nations may live their own 
lives; and with a mirthless smile we can call attention 
to Mexico, which we have allowed to wallow in revo- 
lutions and destroy American lives and property be- 
cause we believe that only by trial can nations rise 
and that every nation is entitled to its own undis- 
turbed revolution if there is hope for the struggling 
masses. And withal we must strive to save our own 
real selves, our own essential character ; for what 
would it profit us if we fought the whole world and 
lost ourselves? We now know, if never before, that 
war is horrible and demoniacally ridiculous; that 
peaceful relations between nations have been en- 
dangered by intrigue, greed, false pride, covetousness 
and suspicion; that big armies do not make for peace, 
but beget arrogance; that human misconduct and dis- 
courtesy may make enemies, and that nothing is more 
vitiating than unmanly envy or fear of a prosperous 
neighbor ; that democracy must be the basis of a sound 
political system, but it must be real, conscientious, in- 
telligent, and open-minded, or we may plunge into 
cataclysmic anarchy. We. may all take courage in 
remembering that the President of the United States 
has led us reluctantly and with unwilling feet into a 
war which we believe will help to establish democracy, 
humanity, and a sense of national duty without profit. 



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